Uganda's adultery law has been scrapped by the Constitutional Court because it treated men and women unequally. The law made it an offence for a married woman to have an affair, but it allowed a cheating husband to have an affair with an unmarried woman. The attorney general said the move may encourage immorality and promiscuity. In the same ruling, the court also scrapped parts of the Succession Act which gave more rights to men on the death of their wives, than to widows. The attorney general had asked the court to consider amending the law, should it rule in favour of the women's case. But the court did not have the mandate to make such amendments, and decided instead to scrap the law completely, says the BBC's Sarah Grainger in the capital, Kampala. Extra-marital affairs are now legal. ... http://news.bbc.co.uk

Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych has asked Austria to mediate in his crippling political dispute with President Viktor Yushchenko. Mr Yanukovych was speaking at a news conference. He says Mr Yushchenko acted illegally by calling a snap election. Thousands of Mr Yanukovych's supporters are camping out on the streets of Kiev. His power base is the mainly Russian-speaking east of Ukraine. Mr Yushchenko has vowed not to rescind his decree dissolving parliament. He warned that anyone ignoring his order could be prosecuted. "I stress again that this order is binding," he said. "Failing to fulfil it will result in criminal charges." But parliament has continued to operate and Mr Yanukovych has told the cabinet not to prepare for May's snap election until the constitutional court rules on the dispute. "I have taken a decision to bring in international mediators: the Austrian chancellor - Austria is a neutral country - and well-known European legal experts," he said. ...http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6529851.stm

Parts of the metropolitan US are relying on hundreds of thousands of foreign immigrants to maintain population levels as native-born Americans move elsewhere, according to figures released today. New York would lose around 100,000 residents a year if overseas immigrants were not filling the void, the census bureau figures for 2000 to 2006 show. Los Angeles and Boston would also shrink without immigrants, threatening their economies and property markets. "A lot of cities rely on immigration to prop up their housing market and economies," said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, a Washington thinktank. The census found that more than 1 million immigrants moved to New York between 2000 and 2006, while 600,000 people, mostly US-born, relocated. The Washington area experienced its slowest growth since at least 1990 last year, with newborns and immigrants barely offsetting the record number of residents who moved out, the Washington Post reported...http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2050978,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=12

Iran's decision to release 15 British soldiers in contested waters my bring relief to families back in Britain, but German papers argue the move is a dramatic PR victory for President Mahmoud Amadinejad. The Iranian leader has been able to save face and embarrass the British at the same time. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is better known for denying the Holocaust and demanding that Israel be "wiped off the map" than for gift-giving. But on Thursday, the Iranian president surprised the world by saying he would release 15 British Navy soldiers arrested by the Revolutionary Guard after they allegedly trespassed on Iranian waters on March 23. The arrest of the soldiers, who had been patrolling the waters at the mouth of the Shatt al-Arab river, which marks the border between Iraq and Iran, sparked a major diplomatic row between Europe and Tehran -- a relationship already deeply strained by Iran's uranium-enrichment program and its apparent ambitions to build a nuclear bomb....http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,475931,00.html

Prime Minister Tony Blair has insisted no deal was done to free 15 Royal Navy crew members, as they arrived in the UK after being held in Iran for 13 days. They were released "without any deal, without any negotiation, without any side agreement of any nature," he said. He welcomed their release, but also mourned four soldiers killed in Basra. While new lines of communication had opened with Iran, he said the UK would not stand for attempts to get nuclear weapons or to support terrorism. "At the same time as we are open to bilateral dialogue and to pursue the lines of communication that have been opened up in the last two weeks, we have to hold absolutely firm in relation to support from any aspect of the Iranian regime for terrorism," he said. Speaking as the Royal Navy crew arrived back at Heathrow, Mr Blair said he rejoiced at their return. But it had to be tempered with the "ugly reality" of the deaths of four British soldiers in Iraq, killed by "a terrorist act" in Basra....http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/6529431.stm

As it hailed the return of 15 sailors seized by Iran nearly two weeks ago, Britain announced the deaths of four soldiers in an ambush south of Baghdad, the deadliest attack on U.K. forces in Iraq in more than four months. British Prime Minister Tony Blair raised the possibility that elements linked to Iran might have been behind the attack, which he called "a terrorist act," but he added that it was too early to make a specific allegation against Tehran. Also on Thursday, the U.S. military announced five American troops had died in separate attacks in Baghdad, and a U.S. Army helicopter went down south of the capital, injuring four of the nine passengers onboard, officials said. The U.S. military said the five U.S. soldiers were killed in three separate attacks in the Baghdad area, where thousands of American forces have taken to the streets with their Iraqi counterparts as part of the operation to quell sectarian violence in the city of 6 million people. ...http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17961655/